Realizations, Explanations, and Appreciations

Hello my dears,

I have a few things I wanted to say that have been on my mind and didn't feel like waiting a week or so to post like I usually do... so be ready to concentrate on this very long post!!! :D

Firstly, I really just wanted to thank everyone for their kind comments on my last post. It really brightens my day and is sooo motivational to read such encouraging words from you amazing bloggers. The support from the blog world and through facebook has helped me sooo much on the hard days and has motivated me multiple times to try my best to make you all proud. So again THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!! I go back and re-read your comments when I need a little boost of motivation and inspiration to challenge myself that day.

With that said.. sometimes i'm scared to be 100% honest on my blog because I don't want to disappoint anyone.. or have people stop reading my blog and offering support. I like to be positive because I feel that being positive really helps to be proactive in doing the right thing.. but sometimes I may be more positive on my blog then I feel in the current day. Recently, I truly HAVE been soo motivated and so ready to get rid of this ED. However.. I feel like I only talk about how motivated I am and how well I want to be doing.. not how much of a struggle it is to achieve that. I feel like i've kicked EDs ass with challenging myself this week.. trying different foods and striving to meet my meal plan, but even still, a couple times I did let over exercising kick MY ass. I don't want to paint myself as the perfect recovery person.. I do try to start my days off in a positive way, but sometimes things don't turn out well by the end of the day. I know its like that with everyone working on recovery, I just hate admitting how much of a struggle it is to do the right thing day after day. I hate how every day can be soooo different! I can have an amazing day, challenged myself, knock ED down and make him angry.. sometimes that can even happen 2 or 3 days in a row!!.. but then he comes back attacking my body and knocks me down. My hope is that those 2 to 3 days can turn into a week, then two, then be able to say i'm truly in recovery.. i'm just not 100% sure how to go about completely turning off the awful things ED says day in and day out. I've recently been telling myself, if I can tell myself i'm fat and believe it, then I can tell myself i'm thin and believe it. I want to believe it.

I want recovery so bad.. but sometimes I feel like I don't want the recovery body, and that scares me.. because with one comes the other. I'm starting to realize that there IS an in between.. its not all black and white. You don't have to be sickly skinny, or "healthy fat looking"... you can be skinny and HEALTHY.. so I have to stop attaching words onto healthy that just simply don't belong there. Healthy should be linked with happy, thats it. You can't be sick and happy. You just can't. I mean, how much of my life do I want to spend obsessing over certain bones that NO ONE thinks is attractive, or blobs of fat that NO ONE else can see but me? Its just not worth it.. and I don't know whats changed, but I do feel that something has shifted in my mindset. I'm more able to look at a sickly thin girl and feel bad.. truthfully sometimes I still feel envious.. but i've been trying to remind myself to look past that body. I try to think of how that person is feeling.. tired, weak, sick, unhappy, most likely hungry, and alone... and I know that I never want to feel that way again. I think part of the reason I have such a hard time imagining myself with out an ED is because i've really had it most of my life.. so I don't know what its like. What do you think about if you're not thinking about weight, calories, food, numbers, exercise.. how do you function? I want to learn.. and I think the only way to do that is by trying to be around people who don't have those thoughts, or had them and are now able to live a normal life. I want to be one of those people that can say "yeah, I may not be ok with my body, but i'm ok with my friends, my life, my happiness, and thats enough for me." I even think that, if I can change my image of what is beautiful.. I may even like my body for what it is. If I can change my mindset from thinking stick thin models with bones and clothes hanging off are beautiful, and switch it to a healthy muscular figure and... dare I say breasts.. with clothes fitting just right, I feel like my ED could be powerless to me.

Quite honestly, yesterday was a hard day for me. I had over exercised the day before.. to an extreme, and as a result of that, my body was really beaten down and not able to function at all the next day. I haven't felt that way in a long time.. and it really brought me back to the days that I would struggle.. and feeling that ill was an every day occurrence that I deemed to be normal. It made me realize how much I enjoy being able to go about my day feeling alive and able to function, not in a fog and cringing every step in pain. It made me sooo angry that I gave into my ED, and determined to do the right thing and help my body feel better. I ended up staying in bed all day ( after my nutritionist appointment).. and then going to whole foods where I challenged myself to a vegan pizza as PART of my dinner.. and made sure to meet my meal plan. It was hard for me to rationalize that it would be ok not to exercise and follow my meal plan.. but ultimately I knew I would be fine.. and it was my own fault for putting myself in the position in the first place. I spent all day thinking, reflecting, and talking to a couple friends.. and it really helped me come to a few important realizations. I've realized that I LIKE food. I LIKE trying new things.. and finding new healthy foods truthfully excites me. I feel like i'm truly doing something good for my body, and I have almost no guilt after eating. I also LIKE putting new foods together and creating new things. I LIKE creating healthy balanced meals and not putting a ton of calorie restrictions on what I want. Yes, i'm still struggling with higher calorie foods, but i'm introducing more things, and recently, i've been writing down all my favorite foods and making sure I incorporate them in my day. Most importantly i've realized that I can ENJOY recovery.. I can fuel my body with foods that make me feel good, it doesn't have to be such a struggle.

With allll of that said, here are some "Looks" pics from the other day!! haha.. Blue ruffled satin shirt, Dark grey high wasted skirt, black leggings ( not pictured) and black patent leather espadrilles with a "wood type" finish on the base. ( not pictured).. it was too hard to get my whole body in the pics and I didn't have time to go outside.







Sometimes I feel like its hypocritical of me to admit that i'm self conscious, but then post pictures on my blog.. and I wonder what image i'm portraying towards my readers. For me, I post these pics for a couple reasons. One is because it gives me an outlet when i'm struggling with my ED... and combines two of my favorite ways of self expression. The first is fashion, going through my wardrobe and putting together outfits that I like, takes my mind off of the over exercise I want to be doing.. or the triggering blog/ website I shouldn't be looking at. The second is photography. I truly enjoy photographing the outfits and then going back later that week/ month/ year and seeing all the different styles i've created with my clothes. I also love editing photos by playing with the lighting, cropping pictures, taking things at different angles, showing off the outfit in different settings against different backgrounds. I feel like from doing this, i've realized that I would love to be a fashion photographer.. or a stylist, and I feel like it gives me great practice. I also love to write.. so maybe i'd like to work for a fashion magazine? I also like to post "looks" pictures because, from reading other blogs, i've realized that having pictures of outfits is something I really enjoy to see.. so I wanted to incorporate that in my blog as well. This is my blog, and sometimes I fear that I shouldn't put certain pictures up because of what people will think of me.. but really.. I want to be doing this for me, and not for anyone else. I want my blog to be an outlet where I just spill my thoughts, post my pictures, and connect with people who feel the same way/ have the same interests as me. Its almost like i'm documenting my recovery for myself, so one day I can look back at all of these posts and see how my thought process has changed. Who knows, this blog may end up switching to more of a fashion/ photography blog the further I am in the recovery process. Point being, right now this blog works for me, it motivates me, gives me an outlet, offers support, and encourages me to work as hard as I can on recovery.

I feel like this was quite the serious post, but I just have so many thoughts swirling around my brain that I really couldn't focus on making witty comments!! haha

I hope everyone is having a great summer, and able to find days that motivate them to push past the difficult ones.

Here are a couple inspirational quotes my friend M shared with me..

"I am free to choose. Everything I am and everything I become is under my own control."

‎"Many things are possible if I accept the fastest way is one step at a time."

and one of my personal favorites...

" If you always do what you always did, the you always get what you always got."

Thanks again for all of your support, and I'll talk to you all soon!!!

p.s. what do you think of my new blog layout??.. its kind of like the color scheme of my room.. I hope you like it!! haha :D

xoxo

- A <3